Sheryl rode with Marquez. They drove south ahead of the rest of the squad that night and stopped by the house of the on-call judge to get the search warrant for the Calexico warehouse signed, then bought burgers at a Jack in the Box and a six-pack of Corona at an all-night store. They were still an hour’s drive from Calexico when they checked into the only motel they could find.
Sheryl unlocked her room, dumped her bag on the bed and showered. She pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, and with her hair still dripping, walked down and knocked on Marquez’s door.
He was barefoot, an open beer in his hand, the TV on low. He looked beat, but the energy of the bust was still running hard in her.
‘OK if I come in?’
‘Of course.’
He opened a beer for her and then showered with the door mostly closed, but not closed, and she wanted to walk in there, but didn’t. She watched steam drift out. She flipped through the crap on TV looking for something funny, looking for something to wind down with.
‘Find anything?’ he asked as he came out.
‘Not yet.’
‘Keep trying.’
She took a pull of the beer and watched him sit down on the only chair in the room and smile at her. Sheryl loved that smile. It carried the whole day in it. He lifted his beer to her, leaned forward and clicked his bottle against hers.
‘We did it,’ he said.
‘Yeah, we did.’
She took another pull of the beer and felt her heart beating. She didn’t know which way it was going to go tonight, but she turned the TV off.
‘Weaver said something to me when we were in the air.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He wanted to know if he was going to be protected.’
‘We can get him a prison out of state, if that’s what he wants.’
‘It’s not the Salazars he’s afraid of. He said he was working on his plane when this all got started and he got an unexpected and what he described as a spooky visit. I showed him a sketch I carry.’
Marquez took a long pull of beer and debated coming clean with her about what he’d done in Tijuana to Miguel Salazar. But that would make a problem for her. It wasn’t fair, though it was strange to carry around something you knew was going to end your career. He put the beer down, got up and fished out a folded piece of paper from his jacket, then sat down next to Sheryl.
‘What’s that?’ she asked.
‘A sketch.’ He unfolded it and showed her Stoval’s face. ‘That’s who Weaver ID’ed.’
‘Where did you get that?’
‘Kerry Anderson.’
‘And you’re carrying it around. What’s happening to you?’
‘Something inside snapped,’ he said and smiled and she couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
They talked about the bust now, ran the highlights over a second beer and turned the TV back on. A late night newscast covered the bust and showed the almond orchards, the Sherpa, delivery trucks, the storage buildings and house as the announcer quoted Holsten calling it a major blow to the Salazar Cartel.
‘I’ll be there when Rayman gets sentenced,’ Sheryl said. She began to wind down. She turned the TV off and looked at Marquez. She could read his face. She could read the quiet. She knew he was thinking about Osiers but she wanted him to put his arms around her in this motel in the middle of nowhere.
They finished the beer. They needed to be out of here before dawn. They needed to be at E.J. Jones amp; Sons before the owner got there and unlocked the doors tomorrow morning, and she saw John was fading. The moment was fading. She knew he’d spent a lot of adrenaline today. Only John could have come up with the plane idea. She saw he needed to sleep but said, ‘I’m going down to my room to grab the warrant. I want to check it again. I’ll be right back.’
‘Take my room key. It’s on top of the TV.’
She scooped it up. She went down to her room and stared at herself in the mirror, looked for the answer there before retrieving the warrant. She didn’t really need to look at it. It was all there. They were set for tomorrow. When she went back to John’s room and let herself in, he was lying on his back on the bed with his eyes closed.
‘Hey, you didn’t go to sleep on me, did you?’
‘No, I’m here.’
But he was groggy. He’d be asleep in minutes. She shut the door softly and leaned over him, search warrant still in her hand, her heart fluttering. She watched his chest rise and fall, watched him fall asleep and knew she should leave and go to her room. She knew that absolutely. She knew that was the right thing to do, but threw the second lock on the door instead, took her jeans off, got on the bed, and sat cross-legged, looking at his face, her thighs cool in the night air, John’s face still and statue like. He made her think of her mother telling her in her cryptic way that if she made a career in law enforcement there wouldn’t be opportunity for her. She might never have a family was what her mother was saying, and Sheryl had shaken that off. She lived in a different world than her mother. She’d been sure of that, and now she was thirty-four and single and her mother was dead.
She could wake him. She could touch him, arouse him, and get on top of him. Instead, she watched him sleep. She knew what the rules for agents were. She didn’t even have her pager with her. Her gun was back in the room. She knew all the rules for agents and yet she wrapped the bedspread over them and laid down alongside him and smiled as he stirred, rolled on his side and wrapped an arm around her. She undid his shirt, her fingers working quietly, slowly. She put her face against his warm skin and smelled him and closed her eyes.
She didn’t want to be anywhere else. A couple of tears leaked out from under her eyelids and she moved her hand up very slowly and touched the skin wet with tears. She didn’t want them to wake him. She pressed her hand on his chest. She felt his heart beating. She felt more tears wet the back of her hand and was afraid it was all coming apart now and what should happen with her and John never would. There had been a moment and the moment was sliding by. John was going somewhere else. He blamed himself for Billy Takado getting killed. It was the sketch of Stoval he was carrying. John was on a different road now. She could feel it and pressed her face softly against his chest. She closed her eyes again and tried to make it different, feeling the warmth of his skin and listening to his heart.